The Boycott Heard Around the World
How Ordinary Canadians Are Leading the Resistance
So Donald got spooked, and we've won a pause for 30 days. Whatever.
Ordinary Canadians know that Donald Trump may come back harder in 31 days, 60 days, or sometime further down the road. And if he does, we will hit him back harder. Or, perhaps in that time, Trump will send in the Marines to force mass ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Or he'll threaten Panama. Or Greenland. Or shake down Ukraine. Such is the nature of the United States in 2025.
What matters to Canadians is that we continue the resistance and maintain the boycotts.
It needs to be pointed out that the boycott of American products wasn't organized by any campaign group. It didn't rely on a slick social media campaign to get buy-in. The boycotts started with the individual choices of ordinary Canadians who were not willing to let the Trump regime shake down our country.
The power of a determined Canadian boycott certainly spooked American leaders when they realized we were serious. The prospect of losing Kentucky's largest export market caused the governor of Kentucky to demand Trump dial it back. He was getting reports of Canadian stores pulling every bottle of Jim Beam and Kentucky spirits off the shelf. Trump backed down, and the booze is back on the shelf, but I have heard many Canadians tell me the dust will settle on those bottles. Canadians are done being nice.
Now, let's talk about the tourism market.
Canadians spend over $20 billion a year vacationing in the US, supporting over 140,000 jobs. Just a 10% drop in visits would cause serious economic pain to an industry still struggling to get over COVID.
Over the last number of days, I have been overwhelmed with stories of Canadians who have cancelled flights and accommodations to Palm Springs, Arizona, and Vermont. Even at the cost of losing their deposits and tickets. A woman who had been part of a choir I was in as a teen contacted me about cancelling a major family trip to Florida. As far as I know, she doesn't have a political bone in her body. She said her family sat down and made the decision that, even if it cost them their deposits and tickets, they did not want to give a dime to a country as dangerous and predatory as the United States.
Canadians are way ahead of their elected representatives when it comes to defending our national sovereignty.
The tariff war should have been a wake-up call to seriously begin diversifying our trade and building a resilient national economy. And yet within hours of Trump backing down, Danielle Smith was back waiving her conspiracy flag. Doug Ford immediately jumped back into bed with Elon Musk. Even Liberal cabinet minister Jonathan Wilkinson has been trying to entice the gangster regime in Washington by offering better access to Canada's critical minerals.
In the United States, the story of grassroots Canadian resistance was barely noticed except for the exceptional work of the Meidas Touch network.
American media and politicians only woke up when it became clear that Canada would fight, and the markets started to tank. Now they've gone back to focusing on other Trump issues, like the fact that the CIA is announcing buyouts for their entire department to make Trump happy.
Such is life in a post-democratic gangster state.
But for Canadians, everything has changed. There is no going back.
There was a time when we used to joke that we were the mouse sleeping in bed with an elephant. Then the comparisons got darker: being a neighbour to America was like living in an apartment above a meth lab. Now we are coming to terms with the fact that we share border with a predatory regime run by men who look on democratic nations as suckers for a shakedown. While we may share incredible relations at the individual level, Canadians understand that we are no longer neighbours.
And the first line of defence in our nation are the Moms at the grocery stores. It is families leading the defence in Red Deer and Halifax when they decide that they won’t spend vacation dollars in a nation as unprincipled as the United States of America.
I put my trust in the determination of ordinary Canadians. When the going gets rough, Canadians have never run. We never will.
The boycott continues. Buy Canada.
You are right, time to diversify, time to make new deals and form new relationships and time to focus on what a great country Canada is. I was looking around Tim Horton's this morning and saw people from all parts of the world sitting together, chatting, laughing - we are truly lucky to live in such a beautiful country.
I heard Doug Ford yesterday admit how "100% happy" he was when Trump seized power - essentially admitting that he thought it was great to see someone who promised to dismantle healthcare and environmental protections, take away safety nets, deport hardworking people, rip apart families, take away the rights of women and LGBT people, a convicted felon, etc., etc., was taking charge.
Meanwhile, the Conservative Leader, Poilievre, was more than happy to accept Musk's endorsement.
They have both shown us exactly who they are and what they stand for.
I sincerely hope that Canadians are also paying attention to the looming threat from within so that we do not end up going down the same dark hole as the US.
It's amazing isn't it Charlie. It's not surprising that we're standing up to the "the gangster" (as you so aptly describe him) but I don't recall all Canadians, including Quebec, ever being this united....except perhaps in 1972.